I see your "internal" looking Twitter for Linux Mint (some long-dash address), and someone has a Spanish language one at /linuxmint, and there is a counter on downloads at /getlinuxmint ... fine and dandy all. But I suggest a public Linux Mint Twitter account, for general computer users (Windows refugees etc.) like you are seeking to attract, not just the technically endowed. Perhaps named something like /welcometolinuxmint

Also as a new arrival, aware of first impressions, seems to me that you would attract the general public better with some broad, overview material atop your website's start page before getting into the blogging about latest community builds. Including a good basic photo of the default interface.

It's a great website! Your online resources are wonderful. But maybe needs a slightly different front door.

I'm of the opinion that a strong Twitter presence is becoming a more important aspect of promotion and marketing, but only if done from the standpoint of communicating with your current and potential user base. Far too many people/companies forget that the genius of Twitter has little to do with pushing your product and everything to do with simple interaction and back-and-forth communication. A perfect example of doing this correctly is @loic, the founder of Seesmic.

The degeekification of Linux on a large scale means adopting new ways of interacting with people. Things like IRC are great and all, but I'm hard pressed to find many people outside of Linux that use it (honestly I'm hard pressed to find anyone who can actually tell me what IRC is in the first place). Forums are more of something people tend to go to with a specific purpose as opposed to something they would just go to anyway. Twitter and Facebook are two fine examples of things that people "just do" anyway, and having a direct line of communication with the makers of their OS alongside their friends, family, news, etc is more of a virtue than most people realize.

Yes, you are so right. I accept the fact that Twitter is now a household and office appliance, like plumbing. No descriptions or concepts needed, we just use it. So it clearly is an essential publicity medium. YouTube is the greatest publicity medium, though. The replacement for the Yellow Pages or any printed resource, and most other web resources. You want to learn about something to purchase or use, you go to YouTube and search for a video (or 100 videos) on it. And the most important place to put a link to your websites, forums, tweets etc. I consider it part of the plumbing too, an essential for publicity of any sort. I see some useful LinuxMint videos on YouTube but more would help, ones posted by LinuxMint people themselves -- comprehensive ones showing it in use, menu to menu.